In-depth
In 1609 Philip Rossiter managed to open a new indoor theatre called the Whitefriars below Fleet Street. Here he took the Blackfriars boys to put on plays as the older theatre had recently been closed down by James I, owing to the scandal of the satire of the boy company plays at both the second Blackfriars and St Paul’s. This was because controversial plays had been put on that caused a stir at court and started attracting the serious ire of the censor Sir Edmund Tilney. For example, in 1605 the Blackfriars company was reprimanded for performing Eastward Ho!, an authorial collaboration by George Chapman, Ben Jonson and John Marston, which gave offence to the court because of its anti-Scottish sentiment. Then in 1606 John Day’s The Isle of Gulls was seen as contentious for its use of political satire against the government. Sir Thomas Edmondes wrote that ‘at this time there was much speech of a play in the Blackfriars where, in the Isle of Gulls, from the highest to the lowest, all men’s parts were acted of two divers nations.’ The boy players evidently found it easy to parody London’s courtly newcomers by adopting Scottish accents. Eventually, things came to a head. The political satires of the boy companies drew official disapproval and then outright prohibition, with the St Paul's company ceasing in 1606 and the Blackfriars's boys being officially supressed in 1608.
The Whitefriars was very clearly modelled on the success of the earlier two indoor playhouses, but it must have enjoyed only relative success, since plays were no longer being performed there after 1613. In that year, the boy company combined with the adult company of players known as Lady Elizabeth’s Men until the lease ended. We know that John Marston’s The Insatiate Countess was performed here by the boy actors in 1610 but after 1613 the boy companies vanish from playing for ever in our narrative of the Shakespearean London theatres.